sixties psychedelia

18 April 2009

The late Alexander Lee "Skip" Spence was born today in 1946. His musical chops graced the output of both early Jefferson Airplane (as a drummer and only on their first LP Jefferson Airplane Takes Off) and of Moby Grape (as a co-founder/guitarist with band manager Matthew Katz). He started as a guitarist with Quicksilver Messenger Service, but none of this work with that band was ever recorded and released. Omaha, from Moby Grape's eponymous debut album, is one of the better known songs written by Mr. Spence.

Similar to Roky Erickson's story, powerful drugs—both the free wheelin' psychedelic street variety and those sanctioned by the psych ward—didn't mix well with Mr. Spence's brain chemistry. According to his fellow Moby Graper, Peter Lewis, Spence fell in with a nasty crowd who supplied some heavy drugs when the band was staying in New York City to record their second album Wow. This bad mojo resulted in Spence having some sort of a breakdown and threatening with an axe fellow band members, the doorman at the hotel where Moby Grape was staying and, eventually, Columbia producer David Rubinson on the 52nd floor of the CBS offices. Rubinson pressed charges and Spence was shipped to Bellevue where, as Lewis summarized in a '95 interview, "They shot him full of Thorazine for six months. They just take you out of the game."

While incarcerated, he wrote the songs for his only solo LP Oar which he recorded after his release from Bellevue. The LP is an odd and lovely artifact that has become legendary within some circles of psychedelic sixties music aficionados and music geeks in general. I recently discovered it thanks to my friend, musican and Daily Doser Eston. This is one of my favorite tracks from the album.